Home·com·ing noun: the act of returning to your home or to a place that is like your home.

In that aspect, I’d say Merriam-Webster has it spot on. With the nearly 150+ days spent at the Pine each year, and the basic seven hours and forty eight minutes we live on campus, Pine Crest starts to become a home. Even if you are a lifer from the days of Pre-Primary School, or you just started this year, there’s something distinctly homey about the Pine.

To the alumni that have graduated, Homecoming is a time to return to the brick-columned halls that they spent just as much time running through that we do today. That remains constant from graduating class to class, no matter the year.

Not only does time remain constant, but here at the Pine, after 79 years, tradition remains a vital part of our storied past and even storied present. From established and grand traditions like the Homecoming football game and Multicultural every year, to newer and smaller traditions like Senior-painted parking spots in the garage—traditions at Pine Crest have always been very dynamic.

But as each year happens upon us, we find that things change, whether it is something different, something new, or something that no longer occurs. Sometimes, it’s even the smallest of things.

“We used to have little badges that had something about the year and the celebration. Then there were those little rubber bracelets that Student Council always had. This year, I don’t think there were any [trinkets], which were always fun because I’ve saved them all and they’ve been cute through the years, and of different themes and different ideas that came down,” said Mrs. Birr, an English teacher who has been at the Pine for quite some time.

Despite small changes, Homecoming, in essence, is always what it used to be. Mr. Clark even says that, “Homecoming is supposed to be about the alums coming back and really appreciating where they’ve come from, and you guys generating a sense of pride for the school to show them that.”

The shift from a week of Homecoming festivities to only a few days, is what Mr. Clark calls “an adjustment of a tradition.” As time passes, things must be modified to be more appropriate for the future. Not necessarily in conduct, but in the changing times.

Mr. Clark put it perfectly when he explained, “Traditions can be adjusted, changed, enhanced, removed, because they’re not positive anymore. My feeling [is that we should] always try to make situations, regardless of what the tradition is, to be better than what it was in previous times. We might have always done something–but that doesn’t mean it was always the right thing to do, just because we had it…..just because we did things in the past in a certain matter, doesn’t mean that we don’t do them anymore, it means we may do them differently because it’s in the best [interest of the] students to be fair,” says Mr. Clark.

Hopefully, people will come to realize that things don’t stay the same forever. All the changes that have happened over the past few years to Homecoming were positive ones, helping us to continue to enjoy the wonderful events and experiences this special week offers.